marytheres, I don't have a child with an ADHD diagnosis (at the present time lol! we've had one in the past...) but my ds dysgraphic *absolutely* has huge challenges with automaticity - related to his dyspraxia and dysgraphia. For instance, he wasn't able to learn how to tie his shoes until late 4th grade because he doesn't have the same learning-by-repetition-which-quickly-comes-automaticity that neurotypical kids do. You might want to do some googling (in all your spare time, eh?
) on dyspraxia or developmental coordination disorder (basically the same thing; neuropsychs will call the diagnosis DCD). The lack of automaticity in everyday skills (things like buttoning a shirt etc) is different than the symptoms commonly associated with ADHD, but dyspraxic people *do* share some overlapping symptoms - one is challenges with organizational and similar EF skills. The book mentioned above will be helpful in that sense (I read it many years ago, personally I think it has some very good suggestions for helping nt kids with organizational skills!).
Our ds was once diagnosed with ADHD but the diagnosis was largely based on what he was appearing to struggle with in the classroom... and once we had accommodations in place for his dysgraphia and we understood his dyspraxia better those classroom symptoms disappeared and when he underwent both an ADHD-specific eval and a repeat neuropsych eval both found no evidence of ADHD.
So that's just our experience - jmo, but the difficulty with automaticity, my guess, is more likely related to your ds' dysgraphia than to ADHD (whether or not he has ADHD
).
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - I didn't have time to reply to your post yesterday - but I was so glad to read you had some answers finally!
